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In organizations that have to meet demands from multiple sponsors, and that mix missions from different spheres, such as “civic,” “market,” “family,” how do participants orient themselves, so they can interact appropriately? Do participants’ practical navigation techniques have unintended consequences? To address these two questions, the authors draw on an ethnography of US youth programs whose sponsors required multiple, conflicting logics, speed, and precise documentation. The authors develop a concept, navigation techniques: participants’ shared unspoken methods of orienting themselves and appearing to meet demands from multiple logics, in institutionally complex projects that require frequent documentation. These techniques’ often have unintended consequences.

This paper aims to analyse how sustainable second-hand stores (SSHSs) use storytelling as a legitimization strategy. Second-hand stores have traditionally relied on a charity identity to attract customers. More recently, changing market demands, the growing popularity of second-hand shopping, “vintage” and online shopping have opened up new opportunities for these social enterprises (SEs). This study asks how SSHSs can maintain their legitimacy with incumbent stakeholders while also exploiting these new opportunities.

This paper uses an abductive approach starting from existing knowledge on how storytelling builds legitimacy in conventional enterprises. The authors collected qualitative data and interviewed owners and managers of second-hand stores in the Netherlands. This paper specifically looked at how second-hand stores are using their web shops to convey stories and build legitimacy with (new) audiences.

Contrary to the authors’ expectations, they found that the web shop is not used as a site for storytelling the mission of the store but is rather a stage for specific products that tell a story of trendy and vintage shopping. This attracts a new customer segment to the store that conventionally does not shop there. This paper concludes that second-hand stores use vintage products as symbols in storytelling through their web shop to gain access to a new market. By foregoing to tell the story of their mission on the web shop, the second-hand stores are choosing to keep their charity and business identity separate.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper makes an original contribution by analysing how second-hand stores are actively exploiting new opportunities created by a changing market context and seeking to maintain legitimacy while doing so. This paper argues that legitimacy is not a static “reward,” rather, something that evolves with the enterprise. This research adds to the body of literature on legitimacy and more specifically cultural entrepreneurship, which holds that entrepreneurs can actively gain and maintain legitimacy through storytelling.

Describes how professional fund‐raisers write and speak persuasively to many audiences, utilizing various media. Explains that the essence of fund‐raising is motivating individuals through symbolic action to behave in a desired way. Argues that fund‐raising is essentially a rhetorical exercise and that the utilization of criteria for assessing rhetorical acts is warranted. Rhetorical criteria direct the fund‐raiser to ask important questions pertaining to the purpose, audience, barriers ‐ the rhetorical problem ‐ and the structure of persuasive communication. Argues also that the fundamental Aristotelian genre is apparent in most fund‐raising rhetorical acts and the genre is identified through recurring characteristics of the rhetoric and helps to define the relationship between form and content. Maintains that successful fund‐raisers relied as much on experience and intuition as on formal rhetorical theory but rhetorical criteria may provide the practitioner with a template by which to create persuasive symbolic action in a broader context not limited to a single communicative act.

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the relationship between the political orientation of television viewers and their perception of television programming quality.

Information from a sample of 2,843 viewers is used. Ordinary least square models are estimated to test the theoretical hypotheses.

The results suggest that the ideological position of viewers has a significant bearing on their evaluation of the quality of television channels. They also point to the key role played by news programming in the audience’s general assessment of channels quality.

There are a number of limitations to this research, which are largely related to the data analyzed, since they are cross-sectional and measures based on a single item are used. Future research in this field ought to take the multidimensional nature of the concepts discussed here into greater consideration.

If political orientation colors viewer perception of quality television, it seems worthwhile for television schedulers to have more information about the political-ideological profile of their audience, so as to design a more appealing programming range for their target viewers. Regarding the impact of the perceived quality of news programs on the perceived quality of the whole channel, it would make sense for television managers to invest in news programs not only on the basis of the size of the audience reached, but also as a way to build up a strong brand and to differentiate it from competitors.

There is scarce empirical research on the perceptions of quality media and television by viewers. This paper develops and tests hypotheses that contribute to a better knowledge of the mechanisms that generate the perceptions of consumers about the quality of television channels.

Purpose – The purpose of our study was to better understand how bloggers organize branded storytelling in fashion and luxury blogs using explicit and implicit self-brand association.

Methodology/approach – We have carried out a Netnography on a sample of 60 fashion and luxury blogs. Data analysis relied on a visual denotational and connotational analysis. We have also conducted hermeneutic interviews of influential fashion bloggers and readers to validate our findings.

Findings – Bloggers differently combine explicit and implicit textual and visual branded stimuli depending on their character types. The most influential blogs combine textual implicitness and visual explicitness, regardless of their character types. Other influential bloggers combine visual and textual elements of the story more or less explicitly depending on the archetypes they have constructed. Bloggers reintermediate the relationship between brands and consumers and serve as a “lens” through which readers may select a brand and decide on purchase. The quality of the relationship between the bloggers and the readers relies on the initial reading contract, the evolving presence of the advertised brands in the blog's content, and the amount of privacy shared by the bloggers with their audience.

Research limitations/implications – Our sample is very limited and includes very influential and professionalized blogs.

Practical implications – Our study should help brand managers in selecting fashion blogs as a new relay for advertisement or sponsored content.

Originality/value of paper – Our study provides a framework to brand managers by highlighting recognizable storytelling patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the influence that newspaper, blog and social media sources of information about a play have on respondents’ willingness to purchase a ticket to a theatrical production.

Respondents saw two advertisements and one review for theatrical productions. The authors randomly varied the version of each advertisement and review so that information regarding the production appeared to originate from a newspaper, blog or social media site. The authors asked respondents to rate the professionalism of the review and advertisements and how likely they were to purchase a ticket. The authors also collected demographic information.

The authors found that newspapers, blogs and social media had similar influence on respondents’ willingness to purchase a ticket. Respondents also viewed the blog-based play review as being as professional as the review from a newspaper. However, respondents were more likely to say they would purchase a ticket to a well-known play than a new play. Female respondents were more willing to purchase a play ticket.

Implications for marketers include the usefulness of non-traditional media (e.g. blogs, social media) in promoting a play – especially for new plays. Theater critics will find that their opinions are equally influential, regardless of whether the medium of publication is traditional (e.g. a newspaper) or digital (e.g. a blog). Principal limitations are the artificiality of a true experiment and an overly simplistic pricing method in the study.

Professionals selling tickets to theatrical productions should use favorable quotes and responses from social media and blogs when marketing tickets because audience members trust that these sources of information as much as newspapers. Internet-based theater critics should appreciate that they are perceived as being as reputable as newspaper-based critics.

Research on theater advertising is extremely limited (especially outside of Broadway), as are studies on the influence of theater critics. The study adds to this meager body of research and provides needed practical guidance to theater marketers.

This research aims to explore in detail aspects of the role and character of student unions as venues for live music in post‐war Britain. Guiding questions ask: what part have student unions, entertainment officers and the wider body of students – in their role as consumers – played in the economics of the live music business? What is specific to the business of live music in student unions? How is this sector of activity related to national and local scenes, promoters, non‐student audiences and the wider popular music culture and economy?

The research draws upon formal and informally archived sources to formulate definitions and scope for research, tracing the historical emergence and fortunes of popular music programming in universities.

The research traces a history of professionalization of music provision by students, a result of co‐ordination efforts by the National Union of Students. It outlines the specific character of live music business in student unions as determined by its subsidized nature.

Sources for research are unevenly preserved and the scope of activity – historical and contemporary is considerable. Further empirical research is required in order to fully explore this important, if neglected area of cultural and economic activity.

The role and character of student unions in the economy of the music industry is rarely considered and this paper offers set of concepts for further research and detailed historical insights into this sector of business.

As intangible cultural heritage, traditional performing arts depend on transmission by individuals and collectives. The purpose of this paper is to explore how traditional performers practice their arts in South Korea. The analysis focuses on the transformations of performance conventions and contexts, as well as on new genres that developed in response to heritage legislation and social change during the last 200 years.

Drawing on a wide array of existing ethnographic research, the paper compares processes of transmission and transformation of three different genres: the solo singing-storytelling genre pansori, the ensemble percussion-dance genre pungmul and the various regional forms of mask dance drama subsumed under the label talnori. The paper argues that the artists, who perform these genres, while not unaffected by the expectations of their audiences, have the power to transcend traditional boundaries.

Due to early professionalization in the nineteenth century, pansori performers could adapt to the changing contexts of market-oriented modernity and survive until governmental intervention in 1962. Pre-modern pungmul and talnori was performed primarily by and for rural communities, resulting in an interruption of transmission when these contexts disappeared and partial re-invention in the wake of official preservation legislation.

The need for repeated performance in historically varying contexts makes the analysis of performing arts particular fruitful for understanding how practitioners of tradition (have to) adapt to change. A historical-comparative perspective provides concise insights into the dynamics of development that informs tradition today. The inclusion of offspring genres (changgeuk, madang-geuk, samulnori) furthermore shows the potential of heritage development beyond the official system of preservation.

Esports is rapidly growing in popularity and viewership. The study's purpose was threefold: (1) to provide a systematic review and synthesis of esports spectatorship research. (2) to provide a reference for the psychology of consumer behavior in esports live streaming and esports event attendance. (3) to deliver a clear picture of the factors that impact consumer behavior in esports online and on-site consumption.

The study systematically reviews motivational aspects of online and on-site spectatorship using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA). SCOPUS and Google Scholar were selected as social science databases. Twenty-five papers met the inclusion criteria: (1) published between 2000 and 2022, (2) empirical investigation, (3) focus on online and/or on-site esports spectatorship/events. Five papers implemented randomization to assess common method bias.

Twenty-five papers qualified for subsequent analysis. The papers were mostly quantitative. They included a theoretical framework and investigated online esports spectatorship. Significant antecedents for motivation to watch esports online and/or on-site were fanship, tension release, entertainment, escaping everyday life and unique features like chat and direct communication. No consensus was found concerning similarities or differences between online and on-site esports spectatorship and traditional sports spectatorship.

This research contributed to a new theoretical, methodological and practical agenda. A more comparative approach analyzing contextual, structural and demographic cues could lead to a holistic picture of esports spectator motivation.